Destiny 2’s recent mid-season patch for Season of Defiance was very anticipated by players due to its sandbox changes, but not everything went according to plan when it was released, as players started experiencing a plethora of issues and glitches of varying severity. Given the nerfs to buildcrafting and the Terminal Overload farming method,Destiny 2’s mid-season patch did more harm than goodaccording to some players, which left the community in a state of disarray. But the patch had one more surprise in store for Guardians, as a new AFK Legendary Shard farming method was found and abused before Bungie patched it a few hours later.
This is not the first time players discover anAFK Legendary Shard farming method inDestiny 2, and the most recent operated in a similar way, with players being able to claim The Witch Queen class items for Glimmer and dismantling them for Legendary Shards. This applied to last year’s Guardian Games class items, in this case, but unlike the exploit found last year, Bungie found a way to patch it soon that prevented the in-game economy to be flooded by Shards. However, the fact that players immediately started spreading the news and abusing the exploit is more telling about howDestiny 2approaches loot than anything else.
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How Farming Exploits Show Destiny 2 Needs a Loot System Revamp
While AFK farming methods would likely always become instantly popular in any game with multiple resources, the fact that ones forLegendary Shards inDestiny 2are always abused doesn’t have to do with player behavior, but with loot starvation.Destiny 2’s current vendor system encourages players to spend hundreds of Legendary Shards at a time to get the rolls they desire on specific guns, but since this is purely regulated by RNG, there are no guarantees. Furthermore, this applies to all of the game’s vendors, making a stack of thousands of Legendary Shards gone in a couple of hours of playing.
The problem is that to amass those thousands of Legendary Shards, players will have to dedicate many hours toDestiny 2, likely by the dozens, even if actively farming the currency. As it stands, it’s much easier to spend Legendary Shards than it is to obtain them in the same quantity, and while currency sinks in MMOs and live service games are needed,Destiny 2doesn’t have the balance between the two nailed down. It’s only natural that exploits become this popular this fast, as a result, and Bungie should learn from this moving forward.
This discourse is not even tied to Legendary Shards exclusively, but rather it’s relevant for all of the game’s many currency types due to how much of those players can obtain and how much they need to spend on every single item. The next best example comes fromDestiny 2’s Enhancement Cores, as they are now used also for crafting weapons as opposed to a dedicated currency up until Lightfall’s launch, which makes them extremely valuable. They are also needed toMasterworkDestiny 2’s guns and armor, as well as purchase Upgrade Modules used to infuse gear.
All of this paints a very telling picture, one that begs Bungie to revisit how its looter-shooter works at its core, and how rewarding playing it truly is. Especially since Lightfall’s launch, with difficulty skyrocketing across the board and rewards remaining mostly the same as before, players have been asking for arevamp of the looting aspect ofDestiny 2, and it’s likely that Season of the Deep will address that to a degree. For the time being, though,Destiny 2remains a game that wants its players fully committed, but it doesn’t always reward that time in the right way.
Destiny 2is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
